


Because I can dish it out (but I can't take it)

by Summertime_saddness



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, One Shot, Pining, Season/Series 01, The Ark Station
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 03:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summertime_saddness/pseuds/Summertime_saddness
Summary: “I’m trying to protect us, Princess,” He pulled a switchblade from his jacket, the light from the fire catching along the sharp surface. Clarke watched as Bellamy began to clean under his fingernails with the edge of the blade, scraping carefully along the space between skin and nail. Clarke made a face before turning away again: what a fucking freak.





	Because I can dish it out (but I can't take it)

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little season 1 oneshot! A bit of a companion piece to "I love you so much (Do me a favor and don't reply)"

Clarke was somewhere by the fire when she first spotted him. The heat from the flames spread across her exposed skin, leaving an ache like a sunburn. She was too close, she could feel it, in the morning there’d be red bumps on her arms. Maybe a rash. But she couldn’t bear to move away from the pool of moving red, couldn’t take her body any further from it’s warmth. Possible burns be damned. She’d been cold for some long. They all had been.

It’d been days on the ground and they were still trying to find ways to thaw out their bodies. Everyone had their way of trying to keep warm. Fighting, fucking, running until they fainted from exhaustion. Or, some just stood too uncomfortably close to the fire. 

He was across from her, surrounded by a haze of smoke. She couldn’t see his eyes but she imagined they were looking somewhere in the flames, maybe he is was looking for an answer in them too. Her head hurt in a way that didn’t come from not drinking enough water or lack of food, though both were true, her stomach a sore pit of need. Instead she ached from the very skin that stretched across her forehead to her eyelashes fluttering against her cheek when she blinked. The kind of pain that extends beyond the physical. 

“Are you afraid?”

She barely heard his voice over the cackling that echoed against her skull. 

“What?”

She could make out his face above the hazy echoes of orange and red. He was smirking at her.

“You seem pretty concerned with the fire. Don’t worry, I think you’re safe.”

She scoffed, taking a step back. She was sweating, her jacket a second skin against her body. 

He circled around the fire until he was properly on her left side. She examined his profile, the sharp curve of his cheek, his surprisingly defined upper brow. His hair stuck in a greasy line against his forehead. There was a spot of soot or dirt against his chin. She looked away quickly.

It had been a long time since she’d been with anyone. Years, really. There had been that time with Wells, but it was dumb teenager shit, it meant nothing. There was Andrea from Section 8 but that had ended before it ever gotten a chance to begin, thanks to her father being floated. 

Bellamy Blake wasn’t a 17 year old, under experienced and eager. He was older, confident. She hated him a little bit, for his casual violence, his callous selfishness. But when she looked at him she felt a heat surge through her that had nothing to do with the fire. Clarke fidgeted uncomfortably in her jacket and turned her gaze back to the flames. God, she missed showers.

Bellamy pushed his hair away from his face, his finger’s leaving a trail of grime against his browning skin. 

“You should just make things easier for yourself and stop fighting it.”

“Fighting what,” Clarke didn’t look up from the fire, “your plan to get us all killed?”

Bellamy scoffed loudly, examining his dirty hands in the firelight.

“I’m trying to protect us, Princess,” He pulled a switchblade from his jacket, the light from the fire catching along the sharp surface. Clarke watched as Bellamy began to clean under his fingernails with the edge of the blade, scraping carefully along the space between skin and nail. Clarke made a face before turning away again: what a fucking freak.

“I’m just trying to help us survive down here.”

He had nice hands, Clarke couldn’t help but notice, they were becoming freckled like the rest of him. She wanted to know what it might feel like to have his hands against her body. She wanted to see if the others had had it right about trying to stay warm. 

Instead she huffed out, “I’d like to believe you Bellamy, but when the bodies start piling up, they’ll be left at your front door.”

“I doubt that, Clarke.” Bellamy flicked the dirt that had accumulated on his knife into the fire. “Plus I live in a tent.”

 

The thing about loneliness is that it creeps up on you like a bad cold. First there’s the chill of it, the ache in your bones, the itchiness around your nose and eyes. Suddenly, you find yourself coughing, but only at night - you blame it on your window, opened just a crack. Then the sneezing comes, and your cough turns tangible, great blobs of fleshy phlegm line the tissues scattered around your room.

Clarke knows what kind of girl she is. She’s blond, pretty in a way that’s not dangerous or threatening, not like Raven or Octavia. She’s smart in a way that tends to annoy people. She knows it, she can’t help it. She’s not interested in trying to stop.

She’s never had the easiest time making friends. No one really wants to be close to the girl who’s mother decides who lives or dies. Besides, there was always reliable, uncomplicated, Wells. Her very first best friend and the one constant who wasn’t afraid of Clarke’s mother, or her intelligence, or the fact they are all going to die up in space one day. Besides, no one hates Clarke’s mother as much as they hate Chancellor Jaha. 

“It’s a privilege, that we aren’t hungry.” Clarke’s father told her once. 

They were standing outside of the door to one of the Clinics where Clarke’s mother sometimes volunteered. The walls were a dull grey and stains blended into the walls, dirty handprints and crusted over waste. The clinic wasn’t like the hospital, where the doctor’s gave you applesauce and patterned bandaids for your scrapes. Instead, there was a man moaning on the floor, a too thin child barely older than Clarke, Clarke’s mother, a mask around her mouth, leaning over a weeping women with blood pouring from her mouth. Clarke was terrified. 

“Anytime we want something to eat, or something new to entertain us,” He leaned over her, tucking a lock of bright blond behind 11 year old Clarke’s tiny ear, “like paint or a new book, we can get it.” 

Clarke stared at her father, at his kind face, covered with subtle lines and fuzzy cheeks. She focused on his eyes, a replica of her own, and not on the smell that wafted from the open door of the food station or the sounds of agony from the clinic.

“I brought you here to remind you of how lucky we are.” He said seriously, “I don’t want you to forget.”

“I won’t.” Clarke promised. She meant it, she never did.

 

And so, she gets it. When they hate her, the few students from other Stations that she meets, how the kids in her own circle around her like she’s a repellent. She thinks of the earth, how lonely it must feel. This giant, beautiful, homeland, destined to kill all that it brings into its orbit. People she thinks, like planets, aren’t meant to be alone.

 

Once, on a bet, a dare, a dumb bout of early teen rebellion, Clarke snuck back onto the Clinic’s station. 

“If you can survive there for a whole day,” Peter Mathews said, face in his usual mean smirk, “then I’ll give you all my coins for the market.”

“Deal.” Clarke grinned right back.

“This is a bad idea,” Wells mumbled, earnest eyes wide.

“Come on, Wells,” Clarke said, already heading towards the docking station. “Live a little.”

She hadn’t survived a full hour.

The moment, she stepped out from behind the barrels of food, shipped across the station to the lower level on one of the agriculture transports, she knew she’d made a mistake.

The loading dock was stuffed with people, some brandishing knives, other’s bowls. They ran towards the barrels with their arms outstretched, grasping at the smooth surface. Clarke ducked back, barely missing the swipe of a too eager arm. 

“Stay back!” Shouted one of the guards, a stun gun held aloft. “You will get the food at the mess hall just like everyone else.”

Someone scoffed and shouts went up in the crowd.

“Everyone else?” Someone screamed, “you mean the left over scraps?”

The crowd began to push forward and Clarke scrambled farther back into the ship. An arm grabbed her, tugging her into the ship’s interior where the guards usually sat. 

“That was a damned foolish thing to do,” The guard said, dropping his hold on her once she was inside. Clarke blinked at him rapidly, her heart was a wooden drum inside of her chest, so loud she was surprised he couldn’t hear it. 

Her savior was tall, older than she was but not by too much. Too young, she thought, to be a guard. His hair was smoothed back in the typical guard stye, but the leftover strands curled gently in rebellion against his neck. He pointed a finger, brown and ungloved, at her in accusation. 

“What were you thinking?” He snarled.

“I-I,” Clarke stared at him and, to her horror, burst into tears.

“Oh hell,” He pulled the door that led out onto the deck close, blocking out the sounds of shouting and the buzz of the stun gun. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”

Clarke looked away in embarrassed, shoving her wet face into the sleeve of her jacket. 

“Here.” She looked up to see the guard, his hard face on had soft around the edges, holding a rag out to her. “It’s clean.”

“T-Thanks,” Clarke sniffled, “I’m sorry.”

The guard just shrugged, looking through the porthole onto the riots outside.

“I guess we’re all curious about how the other lives.” He turned back to her, giving her a small smile, “it’s never quite what we expect.”

She always wondered about him. This mysterious guard, so young and jagged. She never saw him in space ever again.

 

But now, watching Bellamy Blake by the fire, hair no longer in it’s sleek guard’s style, face a dark mass of freckles, she wondered if he’d still reach out, pull her back from danger. Maybe he’d help save them all.

He placed his knife back into the his pocket and gave Clarke one last smirk. 

“Try not to set yourself on fire, Princess.”

Clarke shivered. Asshole.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
